[Avodah] Consumer Alert: Minhog Scams On The Rise!

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 05:15:05PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
>                                         Yavan occupied the BHMK and
> turned it into a pagan temple.

For a couple of decades out of the entire galus. Alexander took over
from Paras uMadai, and Yavan was in charge until a century or so before
the churban.

...
>> Golah and galus aren't the same thing. Again, see bayis sheini.

> Golah means the people who are outside EY.  But what's that got to do
> with it?  The whole concept of "galus hashchina" comes from "galu
> levavel shchina imahem".

Galus is a metaphysical state of separation, golah is a physical one.
Galus requires ge'ulah, a spiritual redemption. Golah ends with qibush
haaretz.

...
>> There are miracle stories of R' Chanina ben Dosa and R' Pinchas b Yair,
>> and numerous others of Chazal. You're now positing that such people
>> aren't in galus, and therefore assuming those midrashim refer to nisim
>> is as rational as assuming the story is mashal. Do I understand correctly?

> It has never occurred to me that there exist frum Jews who don't believe
> that the story of R Chanina ben Dosa happened.

The Rambam outright ridiculed those who do. The Maharsha clearly states
that the more extreme stories are ahistorical, as does the Maharal. Pick
up a copy of RDE's sefer, Daas Torah -- he collects the sources for
you. IIRC, he reprinted the translations of them here a while back.

Me, I don't believe we're supposed to care. We are being anachronistic
when we talk about Chazal's stories and the science of history. They
repeated stories for their messages; the notion of having a precise
record of the past wasn't valued yet. I think Chazal simply didn't care,
and the whole question is a distraction from the stories' points.

(Similar to my opinion on studying the gemara via the revadim
approach. I'm not saying the gemara wasn't written in layers; just that
spending your time watching the layers is a distraction from what gemara
is supposed to be about.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Live as if you were living already for the
micha at aishdas.org        second time and as if you had acted the first
http://www.aishdas.org   time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning